What's the best and cheapest way to store the sleaved cards? I know they won't all fit in the EE box. Once I get Vengeance, that should help, but space might still be an issue. I know Spiff's site has a print outs for creating tuck boxes, but the printer I have access to isn't that great.
I'm thinking i should be able to fit all the heroes in the EE box, perhaps more. Maybe the envorinments and villains can be put in the smaller expansion boxes, but i figure the dividers won't fit.
Second, I use Mayday Premium, dark green (the sleeves are clear, the packaging is color-coded by size; the correct size come in the dark green packages). They're cheaper than Dragonshield, but much higher quality than penny sleeves, and form-fit to the cards, making shuffling really easy.
Third, by my math you should need 3 boxes to hold all of the cards from all the expansions, present and future, when sleeved. Don't rush out and buy an extra box, though, because there will be 1 more mega-expansion after vengeance, so that's not a problem. It should leave about half a box empty for dice, tokens, etc. too.
I opted for clear Dragonshields. A bit expensive, but they are much better quality than penny sleeves. (Which I avoid for any deck that is going to get shuffled - OK for decks used differently.) Downside is that cards sleeved this way are just a bit too wide for the EE box. And sleeved cards are too thick for the tuck boxes. So I ended up getting a box at the FLGS that can hold around 500 sleeved cards. 14 hero decks in there currently with a bit of room to spare and the EE box is holding 10 villain decks, 8 Environment decks and the markers. The cards are in the box sideways and a "row" is roughly 8 Villain decks with four on each side of the divider.
Not an ideal storage solution by any means. I'll have to work something else out by the time Vengeance comes out.
Heavy sleeves worked pretty well for reproduced promo cards. Printed out a file of the cards (from the Spiff site I think) on regular paper, cut them out, and put them into the sleeves with a cheap Magic card between the front and back to act as a stiffener.
My experience so far with penny sleeves and decks is that I see the following issues:
Cards to too slick and don't like to stay in stacks past 20 cards
Cards don't shuffle that well, or at least less well than they do in the stiffer card sleeves
Have a higher rate of penny sleeves catching an edge and tearing down the seam.
Often find that penny sleeves either fit too tightly (almost causing cards to warp), or too loosely and cards start sliding out at the most inopportune moments.
#1 is the main reason I opted for heavier (and thus more expensive) sleeves. The cards are going to be piled and I do not need them sliding all over the place.
YEah, that totals over $10 per pack.Mayday premium only come in packs of 50, but are $2.25 per pack, so they're only HALF as expensive. And you need a LOT of sleeves for Sentinels, so save yourself the money and go Mayday Premium.
Ok now i know this is not exactly what your looking for but I (IMO) recommend go out and buy a theros holiday box (new magic set) then sell the boosters to nearby magic players (if the shop is ok with that) it will be about $25 with some boosters
then you have a box that will take everything released to date (with room for sleeving) plus extra room
I use fantasy flight greys instead of the mayday premiums. My original reasoning was I used them for my other board games and worked out well, but also they were 2$/pack before. They seem to have gone up to 2.25$ now, which still isn't nearly as bad as dragon shields. For an actual storage solution i followed what Orphanleni did https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/storage-box-of-doom-a-how-to-manual-3556
That allows for growth for at least vengance and probably the next expansion afterwords. Also I was able to get some unknown artist. I think his name is Adam something.......... >.>
I'll grab a pic of it when I get home from work and try to remember to post it tomorrow.
I would say that if you find a sleeve you like that is a mite smaller than Dragon Shields than you are good to go. I am using those and they are *just* a bit too wide for using the EE boxes well, or the tuck boxes on the Spiff Site.
Given I have expansions on order I'm am now looking for an "improved" mass storage system since a long cardboard box with hero decks in alphabetical order is about to turn into two such boxes.
I've looked at doing individual deck boxes that will fit the sleeved cards. My options so far seem to be downloading custom tuck box templates, getting cardstock and then printing my own wider and deeper boxes. My main issue with this is getting printer access to print out the boxes, and then quite a bit of assembly and gluing/taping work since with Vengenance that will be 62 boxes (23 hero, 23 villain, 16 environment.)
Or using plain Ultra Pro deck boxes. The latter look like they can hold one hero deck with space to spare, two villain decks with a bit of spare space, or four environment decks including cardboard dividers (but not the nice ones included with EE, too tall). That's still a lot of boxes, 39, and these boxes go for about $2 each retail.
(The issue with boxes for sleeved cards it appears is that a lot of the market appears to be for Magic decks - of which you carry a few relatively large decks (80-100 cards?) and thus can use decorated boxes. The other side of the market is trading cards where there are plastic boxes large enough for sleeved cards, but not thick enough to hold 40-45 sleeved cards. SotM decks seem to fall into an unhappy middle - so the DIY cardstock boxes start looking pretty good.
For transport after that point I guess I stick with a small duffle bag and using EE/expansion boxes for carrying tokens, oversize, cards etc. I also have a carrier I use for Wings of War minis which might be of an appropriate size to repurpose towards piles of SotM boxes.
This is what I do. Heroes get their own boxes, Villains go two to a box and Environs go 3 to a box. Now, doing the math you will not have enough boxes from just the dragon shields. I was able to solve this problem by using my other boxes from the dragon shields i bought for magic decks and borrowing them from friends. Then, All of these boxes sit in a cardboard box that I got from some computer part i ordered off new egg at some point in the past. idk what Im gonna do with vengeance since the box is full now.
True. Thus a query to the FLGS I frequent to ask about extra DS sleeve boxes that might be about since he sells them and has a pretty steady stream of customers buying Magic cards and sleeves of that size. He said he'd check and if buyers are sleeving there and disposing of boxes he'd save them for me. Hopefully that will turn up enough extra boxes to get by, or at least reduce my requirements from the other methods. And then the challenge becomes getting the right box to organize and hold the little boxes.
I actually just finished another one as a Alliday present for a friend. It's the cleanest one I've made yet and it is even "Joker" themed, lined with green in the lid and purple in the base.
Do the Mayday Premium sleeves fit inside the SotM boxes? I know the Dragon Shield sleeves don't (just a smidge too wide), and I don't want to fork out $60-70 on sleeves that don't fit in the original box.
